Down with Boomer Humor

James writes (cross-post with The New Criterion):

I attended a lunch talk today sponsored by a libertarian non-profit think tank. The guest speaker was the boomer humorist P. J. O'Rourke. I must say, he wasn't all that good. The subject of the talk was O'Rourke's new book on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. I thought that the conclusion of this book review from the Baltimore Sun pretty much summed up my own feelings about the performance:

O'Rourke's book is a peculiar kind of satire. By turns smart-alecky and oracular, it gives readers something to do instead of thinking. O'Rourke professes to share Smith's skepticism about all-encompassing systems, but he applies the economic theories of The Wealth of Nations indiscriminately, indifferent to the changing realities of a post-industrial age of information. Laughs aside, O'Rourke's "Cliff's Notes" to Adam Smith are an abridgment to nowhere.

Am I the only one who thinks that the Rolling Stone-National Lampoon literary style of over-enthusiastic, underwhelming libertarianism hasn't aged well? I had the same feeling when reading The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie by Chris Miller, another National Lampooner. In Miller's case, the thought of a writer who is eligible for the AAPR discount basing his literary career on copping a feel 50 years ago stuck me as rather sad and pathetic. Here the stories were more lecherous than charming (unlike the movie Animal House, which for many reasons remains a masterpiece).

O'Rourke can't bank on his youth any longer either, and his sort of hip out-of-it-ness strikes me as flat. O'Rourke prides himself on still using a typewriter. I find it more lazy than charming when culture writers choose not to use the internet. Appealing to what he perceived to be our own sloth, at his luncheon talk, O'Rourke promised to read The Wealth of Nations "so you don't have to." By the end of the event, after a three course feeding of sweetened half-observations, I came to wonder if O'Rourke had read The Wealth of Nations himself.

Compared to the boomer humorist typing away on his Selectric II, I'll take Wikipedia any day.

As an aside, if you are looking for a truly stimulating non-profit program of talks and events, with speakers ranging from Mark Steyn to David Pryce-Jones to Andrew Roberts (who is coming up next month), look no further than The Friends of The New Criterion.

Who is Baby Carl?

James writes:

After the difficulties of the past few weeks, I thought we could all use a break. Since this is a family blog, it occurred to me that it might be fun to introduce our extended kin to this forum. I couldn't think of a better place to start than with my most interesting relative, Baby Carl.

Baby Carl is my father's half brother. He is so named bacause my father is also Carl, and my father's father was also a Carl. So in my family you have Big Carl (my grandfather), Little Carl (my father), and Baby Carl (my half uncle). Baby Carl wasn't raised by my grandfather, who suffered from wanderlust and nearly died trying to build a hunting lodge in Somalia. (You can read a little about that episode here.) So Baby Carl goes by another last name--Cestari.

If this wasn't interesting enough, Baby Carl has distingished himself in his profession by becoming a master teacher of something called 'gutterfighting.' This is a philosophy of hand-to-hand combat that combines martial art dicipline and dirty tricks to deliver the greatest and swiftest lethality, should you really need to kill someone in a fight. Baby Carl can explain it much better than I can. You can read one of his manifestos here, including these short-cut tips to mortal combat:

*Attack the throat with the INTENTION of crushing it! No brainer.

*Attack the anterior/lateral carotid triangle. One of TWO primary KO points. Kyusho/Dim Mak this *AIN'T! Just "hammer" the bastard. Fast, hard and often is the key phrase!

*Attack the cervical spine/C-1 - dens bone attachment.

*Attack the head/brain case. Now here we get interesting. The goal in attacking the head should be, in my opinion, to cause ACUTE TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY. Other possible injuries are secondary. *Attack with the intention of causing massive "coup contra coup" brain trauma, either through translational or rotational impact. Cause severe "kinking" of the brain stem, either by hyper flexion or extension. Forget the "death touch" stuff. THIS IS HOW people in the real world get Fucked up.

What does this all mean? Baby Carl has starred in a series of videos demonstrating his fighting techniques that have become the rage of the underground extreme-fighting types. The videos now retail for hundreds of dollars. Fortunately, a few choice clips are available on You Tube. You will recognize Baby Carl by his missing his ring finger on his right hand. You will also notice that we Paneros fight dirty.

Food: Uptown

Dara writes:

Because of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday today, I stayed for an abridged schedule at the literary agency where I work in Harlem. Many of the area's stores closed for the holiday, including the Original SoupMan, where I eat. I eat here not because this is a franchise of the shop portrayed in my favorite TV show, "Seinfeld," or because I particularly relish soup. I eat here because it is the only good-looking eatery in the immediate vicinity of 132nd Street and Lenox Avenue. If there is a reader who can correct me, I would love it.

My friend Ruth and I, spurned by our soup craving, shopped in the neighborhood Associated Supermarket for lunch goods. Lunch for two cashed in at under ten dollars, which is roughly what a "combo meal" for one--large soup, grilled panini, and a fountain drink--would have cost at SoupMan. The combo meal is pretty good. I have tried an Italian wedding soup--little pearl noodles, meat dumplings, spinach--which I usually love (especially at P&W's Sandwich Shop near Columbia University) that was grotesquely over-salted. I almost felt I could not drink for three days lest I bloat like a balloon and pop. But SoupMan flavors its butternut squash soup with freshly grated carrots and orange zest, and the grilled cheese panini is passable. Less so the fruit and bread that accompany the meal. The banana might have been sitting by the boiler in a bodega for two weeks, so soft is it, while the bread is so hard I could sign my credit card receipt on it. The woman who owns this franchise is nice but rings customers out at a rather lethargic pace.

So it is not as if I experience Le Bernardin and today had to make do with Blimpie. But Blimpie is just about what I got at the neighborhood Associated Supermarket. I did save money there--on 99 cent whole wheat pitas, flip-top cans of Bumble Bee tuna (because we couldn't ascertain if the agency had a can opener), small jar of Hellmanns, Vlasic dills, and two bananas. My friend keeps kosher, so alas we could not spring for the Oscar Mayer salami.

I have heard that development is happening in many parts of Harlem. I would say that not a ton is going on around 135th Street near Harlem Hospital, although apparently Make My Cake around 139th Street serves a wicked red velvet cake that beats canned tuna any day of the week, especially holidays.